The increasing height of wind turbines and their location often in open areas make them very exposed to direct lightning strikes. Wind turbines experience significant number of lightning strikes during their lifetime, mostly to the rotor blades. The lightning current can cause severe damage to the blade structural materials and involves considerable costs of repair like, e.g., materials, labor and downtime. Therefore, lightning protection of blades and lightning detection in general in the surrounding of wind turbines is a very important issue.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,468,505B2 relates to a lightning detection system including a conductor configured to receive a lightning strike and transmit a lightning induced current. The system also includes a fiber optic current sensor configured to detect multiple lightning parameters from the lightning induced current. By applying a plurality of fiber optic sensors the system may be configured to measure localization of impact of lightning.
Implementing such plurality of sensors does involve additional hard- and software and in consequence additional costs.